Environment and Energy Daily, July 21, 2006 is reporting “A chronic illness only partly explains why James Hansen decided to skip the House Government Reform Committee’s first hearing on global warming in seven years. The embattled NASA scientist also passed on yesterday’s event because lawmakers are “still in denial” about the reasons for dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate, he said last night in an e-mail.

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday’s hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma to create a drip in his lungs. But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.”
Comment is superfluous.

I think the point Hansen has been makeing over the last couple of years is of the AND variety not the either/or variety; namely, that we shouldn’t focus exclusively on CO2 reduction strategies because these other GHGs are also playing a significant role and should be addressed. So it’s not really surprising that the carbon lobby hasn’t been using him as their poster child (especially since he’s been the most vocal u.s. advocate for action on AGW)

btw, I wonder if it might not be better to refrain from reading too much into a second-hand version account of an e-mail sent out by Hansen (unless any of you have seen the actual e-mail and can post). Doesn’t seem like a very scientific discussion that one likes to see from this site…

The problem for the warmers could be that the details of their argument may not be well settled and that makes it hard to explain under scrutiny. The contribution of feedback to what we see, and what they project may not be that well understood and it could make a huge difference.

They say the hockey stick doesn’t matter, but they also say if Mann were right, the situation would be worse. They’ve now said so under oath. It seems like common sense too some/many, but surely this can be argued both ways. If I were Hansen, I’d want some charts that explain these issues if I were being questioned about them in a skeptical manner. I haven’t seen any good charts on this.

There is also the contradiction of what Hansen’s studies say and what he says on 60 Minutes about only having ten years to take action. That might be easier to handle. Quotes pulled out of studies don’t necessarily take into account much higher CO2 levels or reduced global dimming. His energy imbalance study is based on current ocean temps. It projects about one degree C, but I suspect that doesn’t include increased CO2.

The point is that his findings that seem some of the most reliable indicate that CO2 is NOT responsible for the recent temperature rise. This is a complete contradiction to the statements you hear every day, and all throughout the hearing, that CO2 is responsible for global warming. It seems like a huge blind spot or denial or whatever you want to call it in the barrage from the left.

The most quoted evidence on attribution of warming to humans is the notion that the current warming is not explainable without CO2, ergo humans are the culprit. But Hansens results say CO2 is not responsible. How do I spell it out more clearly. This is a huge and obvious contradiction.

Re #20
Yes. And the more you focus on uncertainty (for long-term data) and sensitivity analysis (for the GCMs), the greater will be the impact. Not that scienctific data and GCMs are bad. It’s the policymakers that ignore the substantial uncertainties that are the real problem. They’re the ones marginalizing the good science.

It going to take more than statisticians. There’s already the satellite temperature record that contradicts the hysterical claims of unprecedented warming. Here’s an instrument that’s calibrated against both against an internal standard and the 3 degree radiation from the Big Bang, that takes 30,000 measurements a day covering 60% of the earth, and covers 98% of the earth every 6 or 7 days. It shows next to no warming for the last 25 years. Compare this with the heterogeneous and completely uncalibrated surface temperature network that covers a fraction of the 30% of the earth covered by land. A network that has lots of problems like siting in parking lots, on the roofs of houses, and so on. Yet the climate “science” people take the surface temperature as gospel truth and do everything they can to minimize the value the satellite measurements. In any other field the satellite data would be the gold standard and the ground based data would be mined for local information at best.

#21 – “It’s the policymakers that ignore the substantial uncertainties that are the real problem.”

The real problem is that legitimate and high-ranking scientists like Jim Hansen, Jonathan Overpeck, John Houghton, Michael Mann and others lend their substantial authority to the claim that human-produced gasses, CO2 especially, are responsible for the 20th century rise in temperature and that the rise is unprecedented in velocity.

Neither claim is scientifically sustainable. GCM models are far too uncertain to support such claims. These people have put their gut-feelings, or their political agenda — I don’t know which — ahead of scientific knowledge. They are claiming, in short, to know what they do not know.

Even Hans von Storch, in his testimony before the Whitfield committee, said that, “Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (bolding in the original),” when in fact there is no such scientific evidence because there are no GCM physical models accurate enough to yield such meaning to the empirical facts attending climate.

I’m sorry to say that there are far too many scientists who need better science advisors.

About Hansen himself, he’s the guy who in 1988 said before Congress that he was “99% sure” that anthropogenic CO2 had by then revealed its influence on global climate warming, even though there was no evidence at all to scientifically sustain that claim. That’s 99% sure, but without any knowledge.

More recently, he has claimed that current Greenland melting is unprecedented and that the whole ice cap could be substantially reduced by ~2100. This is entirely BS, as the detailed history of Greenland warming is not known, what *is* known is that Greenland warmed faster and further during the 1930’s-40’s than it has done recently, and finally there is no legitimate theoretical basis whatever for the claim (Hansen even admitted as much). Hansen’s opinionating, in short, is luridly excessive and unreliable. In the time and culture of Thomas Aquinas, he might have been advising the duke to, ‘Repent! The end is nigh!.’

to fFreddy, Paul, it IS going to take more than statisticians. I was implying a congressional investigation in which statisticians play a significant role. Along the lines of the Barton Committee, for example. Even before the Wegman Report it is very clear to me that many climate scientists operate in isolation from the statistical community and are incompetent researchers.

In fact, if you look closely at the reconstruction of Moberg 2005, Figure 2d, they show current temperature about 0.1(+/- 0.2) degree lower than that of 1000 CE. Not that I believe that sort of precision.

Say, Steve B., you’re up on all the latest and greatest — can you point me to a paper that shows the sum of uncertainties in GCM parameters propagated through the calculation of a climate projection? I keep asking people, but no one seems to have come across such a thing.

Steve B and Steve M, the Law dome temperature record is probably reflecting local/regional temperatures (which have quite huge variations!), but the CO2 record is reflecting more global CO2 variations. As there is a good correlation between (semi) global temperatures and CO2 levels (based on the Vostok ice core), the pre-industrial 8-10 ppmv CO2 variation found in the Law Dome ice core corresponds to ~1 C global temperature variation… Which is a lot more than found by the MBH9x reconstructions and some others, but near the Moberg and Huang reconstructions…

Re #35: And is within the MBH error bars (although that’s less impressive going back 1,000 years since the error bars get bigger).

Re #36: The blade is pretty much the same for all of these studies since it’s basically the period of instrumental records. In any case, this study appears to be very good news for the whole Hockey Team. Too bad it wasn’t available for the NRC report.

Re # 37 – Steve B. – Looks like you have not read Steve M’s response in #34 above and obviously you have not digested Steve M’s testimony and his graphs. My understanding is that the “hockey stick” was done for part of the Northern Hemisphere. So in true hockey team fashion you are trying to cherry pick a small part of the southern hemisphere as was done for the hockey stick using bristlecones and foxtails. I have not seen your comments on Steve M’s figure 1 in his presentation. Do you seriously think the “hockey team” is going to quote that study. When is someone going to do a true GLOBAL study? You are still dreaming!!

#38 — “Would love to see some confidence envelopes on some of these model predictions.”

Me, too. And I’m guessing that the reason we invariably see “ensemble averages” instead of uncertainty propagation is that the modelers, and the IPCC hierarchy, know the latter would transparently reveal the absurdity of GCM projections.

What sort of response would John Houghton get if he stood up before the world press and said, with all gravity, that the projected 2100 global average temperature increase is 3 degrees C, +/- 30 degrees (possibly more on the order of +/- 300 degrees). He’d be met with incredulous laughter, and deservedly so.

The IPCC would then be reduced from being waited upon for memos of cosmic importance, to producing boring reviews of recent advances in climatology. We can’t have that, can we?

And so the real reason we get ensemble averages instead of uncertainty propagation is so that the johnhoughtons of the world can, with a straight face, wear a tie in public.

Re #39: Gerald, read comments 2, 28 and 38 to that linked post. The upshot seems to be that the isotope ratio is reflective of local temperature (although apparently some conclusions can be drawn about global temps when various ice cores are in agreement). By contrast, CO2 level is “well-mixed” globally (i.e., essentially the same everywhere all the time), so using it is the opposite of cherry-picking. As I understand it, the limitation of CO2 is that it lacks anything like annual resolution relative to temp changes, but of course long-term trends like the MWP amd LIA are easily caught. I don’t have a GRL sub, but this poster seems to be from the same work. Note the lovely graphic. Hey, it shows the Roman Warm Period too!

Given Cuffey’s position, he would have been very aware of this work at the time the NRC report was being put together.

Steve B, as you can see on the graph on the poster (and what Steve M has shown about the Law Dome graph) is that CO2 levels were falling during the MWP-LIA transition with app. 10 ppmv.

Until the start of the Industrial revolution, CO2 levels *followed* temperature changes, never preceded, but in many periods (during the ice age – interglacial – ice age transitions), there is a huge overlap, so that it is possible for climate modelers to include a huge feedback of CO2 on temperature. However, there is one period in the past, where there is no overlap at all: the end of the previous interglacial (the Eemian), where temperature (and methane levels) were already near minimum, before CO2 levels started to decline. The subsequent drop of 40 ppmv CO2 didn’t give a measurable further drop in temperature (see here ). That points to a low influence of CO2 on temperature. That doesn’t mean that there is no influence at all from larger changes in CO2 on temperature, but we simply don’t know how much…

The influence of temperature on CO2 levels in the Vostok ice core is quite straight-forward (1 C = 8-10 ppmv CO2) and is the result of a change in equilibrium of all physical, biological and chemical reactions in the carbon cycle. There is some discussion, as the Vostok temperature is derived from deuterium changes and is mainly reflecting the SH temperature. But as at the same time the ice sheets in the NH were increasing/decreasing, the global temperature changes might even be larger, due to larger fluctuations of the more land-based NH.

Thus if there is a 10 ppmv change in CO2 levels between MWP and LIA, then the global change in temperature probably was 1 C (and maybe even higher). What does that say about the LIA-current temperature change? Nothing, as CO2 levels since 1850 are leading temperature changes, and we don’t know the real influence of CO2 (including feedbacks) on temperature. Does that change the HS? Yes, as we now have an U-shaped stick, due to a much deeper LIA, and the blade is getting much shorter… See the difference between the MBH9x and e.g. Moberg’s reconstructions…

Perhaps you can take a moment to explain why the Summary for Policy Makers of the TAR is so different in its tone and conclusions than the body of the document.

I haven’t seen the latest IPCC report. But I assume that the egregious politicisation of the Summary for Policy Makers in TAR won’t be repeated now that Mr Mann et al’s credibility has been somewhat challenged?

The more inaccurate the coming summary is, the more easily impeachable. There are plenty of birds around to do the impeaching, and pecking bones dry. One can dream, anyway.
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I think that what is mentioned in #49 is just about as right on topic as it can possibly be. I have just watched most of the hearing on the webcast, and I think that Michael Mann has done the same thereby trying to gain himself an advantage. Having watched the webcast from the hearings I think Mann will be convinced that he has nothing to fear from the Democrats, and so it will only be him and the Republican side with no qualified opponents they can play out against him. It might be pure tactic in a desperate try to save face for himself. From the web-cast I didn´t get the impression that there were yet any agreement from Michael Mann to show up on the 27th. Does anyone know more about Mann shoving up or not?

Lastly I would say that I´m not the least impressed by G. North. What a whimpsy guy to listen to, and he did in no way inspire me with confidence that he in any way intended to be neutral in his opinions and positions. Steve M. don´t expect much help from G. North, which I think is Mann´s man.

I disagree. Mann wants his side to win, just as we want our side to win. My impression of North is that he wants to be on the winning side, but is largely indifferent as to which it might be.
I never did regard “smooth” as a compliment.

If Mann does appear in front of the committee, he will presumably be spouting the RC party line, that the Wegman report is deeply flawed because it does not cover the reconstruction step, and we all know that the off-centering doesn’t matter, etc., etc.
I do hope that Steve or Wegman will be present again, or will have suitably briefed suitable persons, to ensure he doesn’t get away with it, hint, hint …

More to the point, if I were Barton and I had Mann in front of me, under oath, the first thing I would do is reach for those questions that were sent out last year and Mann’s saucy replies, and start digging through them.
Tell me about the R2, Dr Mann …

Here, however, we choose to focus on some curious additional related assertions made by MM holding that (1) use of non-centered PCA (as by MBH98) is somehow not statistically valid, and (2) that “Hockey Stick” patterns arise naturally from application of non-centered PCA to purely random “red noise”. Both claims, which are of course false, were made in a comment on MBH98 by MM that was rejected by Nature , and subsequently parroted by astronomer Richard Muller in a non peer-reviewed setting–see e.g. this nice discussion by science journalist David Appell of Muller’s uncritical repetition of these false claims. These claims were discredited in the response provided by Mann and coworkers to the Nature editor and reviewers, which presumably formed the primary basis for the rejection of the MM comment.

Contrary to MM’s assertions, the use of non-centered PCA is well-established in the statistical literature, and in some cases is shown to give superior results to standard, centered PCA.

One of the many difficulties in this field has been UCAR’s and Mann’s scorched earth policy in refusing to admit anything – not even the biased PC methods. Has anyone noticed Mann retracting the above post or UCAR retracting their press release that all our claims were “unfounded”? Didn’t think so.

fFreddy, you might indeed be totally right regarding North vs. Mann. It´s just that I had the impression of G. North as a very slippery kind of guy, the kind of guy who would never give you a straight and direct yes or no as an answer on a question submitted to him. My opinon of him being Mann´s man occured to me in that, anytime Wegman was rather conclusive on Mann, G.North obviously felt obliged to put in a lot of remarks in the form of “but”´s and “if”´s and “then”´s as if he wanted to defend Michael Mann. Well I´m going to watch the hearings on the webcast again tonight and maybe I get another opinion.

I strongly support your hint about somebody other than Mann showing up on the 27.th., so as not to leave the whole show to Michael Mann. Just in case!

Hans
I don’t think you are being entirely fair to North. As steve pointed out, the NAS panel more-or-less undertook a literature review; they didn’t go through the other studies in detail. If the NAS panel didn’t have evidence that these other reconstructions were busted, they had to accept them as legitimate science. To some extent, North as chairman has to reflect the views agreed in the NAS committee.

I am interested in seeing Mann’s appearance on the 27th. I fully expect him to be unapologetic and very aggressive in his case. The latest line at realclimate is that they acknowledged “way back when” that decentring affects the first PC, and this is not news; but it makes no difference to the final reconstruction. In fact, RegEM “proves” that an objective method gets exactly the same result, and that the wegman conclusions are trivial.

I heard Mann interviewed on the BBC, faced with an interviewer who was trying to make a dent in him. He just floored her with an incredible array of statements which left me astonished, and the interviewer gasping for breath. Unless you are highly prepared, and cognisant with the subject area, even a lawyer will need very thorough briefing to make an impact on Mann. An argument about Preisendorfer’s N criterion would rapidly induce torpor, i fear…

Just in case any Congressman might find it useful to have on paper what Michael Mann actually told the world 18 months ago it went like this:

Professor Michael Mann, interviewed on BBC Radio by Sarah Montague on the Today Programme on 24th February 2005.

Sarah Montague:
Can I ask you first of all what you make of the criticism of your work?

Michael Mann:
Well a lot of the criticism that has been levelled against us is somewhat spurious, it’s not real science but rather it’s sort of ad hominem and somewhat vitriolic in nature so we try to separate the sort of politically motivated spurious criticisms of our work from ligitimate scientific issues that have been raised that are part of the give and take of the scientific process and which we and a number of other researchers in this area are actively working on improving the reconstructions decreasing the uncertainties in our estimates of past climate.

Sarah Montague:
Can I put to you one or two of the criticisms by two scientists, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, which were that there were errors in your work. That ‘unjustifiable truncations, extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, all things which they say show that your hockey stick graph does not reflect an accurate picture of what happened.

Michael Mann:
Just about every claim of theirs has been discredited and despite the fact that they’ve levelled a number of specious and false claims against our work they have managed to promote those claims quite effectively in certain venues. Essentially what these individuals did was to get a hold originally of what turns out are basically corrupted data files so they weren’t using the actual data that we had used, even though all those data were available on our web site. And so they weren’t using the correct data but even more egregious than that it turns out, and this is something they haven’t explained yet, actually deleted about 80% of the proxy data that we used prior to the year AD 1600, so something that’s sort of interesting while they criticise the supposed lack of reproducibility of our results, they produce our results quite closely back to about AD 1600 – that’s where the results diverge – and it turns out that before AD1600 that’s where they started to delete most of the data that we used. And other researchers now have actually reproduced our results and have shown that their results are indeed spurious and are a result of basically having censored most of the data that we used.

Sarah Montague:
The Wall Street Journal has reproduced their criticisms and said that one of the problems of this whole discussion is that you have tried to shut the debate down by refusing to disclose your workings.

Michael Mann:
Well you know that’s unfortunately one of number of false claims that were made by the Wall Street Journal

Sarah Montague:
Have you published the Maths that you used?

Michael Mann:
Yea. In fact, all the data and a detailed description of the algorithms have been made available on our web site and on Nature’s web site and in fact the links to both of these can be found in a recent post that we actually published on a web site: Realclimate.org. that I’m involved with, with a number of other climate scientists that is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists.

Sarah Montague:
What about the other charge made in the Wall Street Journal that you were forced to retract some of your data?

Michael Mann:
OK so just finishing that first point – so all of those data are available and the algorithm is provided – detailed algorithm is provided and a number of other scientists in fact have been able to reproduce our work fine. The other claim that you referred to – you stated that my co-authors and I – and I’m quoting – were forced to publish a retraction of some of our initial data – that’s an outright falsehood – and anyone who actually reads the corrigendum that we published in Nature last year will recognise that we did not retract any data whatsoever, nor were any of the results of our original article changed in any way whatsoever. We simply corrected the description of certain data sets used and we provided additional supplementary material to facilitate legitimate attempts to reproduce our work.

Sarah Montague:
One of the things that scientists are surprised at is that your figures don’t seem to show a warming period in the Middle Ages. Did that surprise you too?

Michael Mann:
Well, actually that’s not true. In fact our reconstruction does show warmth during the medieaval period that’s comparable to the middle 20th century. It’s not as warm as the late 20th century. So the conclusion of our reconstruction and a number of others is that the late 20th century, that is the past few decades is outside of the range of variation over the past thousand years. In fact a study published in Nature just last week by Mauburg and co-workers, actually reinforces that conclusion. Their conclusion is that the late 20th century is the warmest period in at least the past 2000 years.

Mann’s comments are a mix of world-class precisionist wordsmithing, and phrases which I am unable to reconcile with reality.

For example, he is correct to say that M&M got hold of “corrupted data files”; but what he misses out is that his group provided them to M&M, and vouched for their integrity ! Likewise the distinction between retracting data, and retracting a description of which data were used, is really rather fine.

as to his comments about M&M, I am astonished, and can only guess if he has any idea of the UK law on defamation, and the personal liablity such statements might incur.

Under any circumstances, it would take a very well briefed interviewer to have caught him, and although I think the interviewer asked tough questions, she was brushed aside.

What I had in mind was that if Dr Mann actually does appear, a smart congressman might review with him what he had actually delivered to the committee after that interview. Either it added nothing to the published record or it did. I have the impression, for instance, that that the fact that he calculated R2 was not known at the time of his broadcast. Presumably Steve can identify some specifics that are still undisclosed.

I will be surprised if Dr Mann appears because he risks not just being shown to be wrong.

Re #44: Steve Bloom. You seem to have gone quiet. I am sincerely interested in your take on my question. Being an amateur here, it seems that your stance is very close to that expressed by Stephen Schneider. Good stuff, Eh!!

I’m not going to mince words: Mann lied. He told outright falsehoods, made lies of omission, distorted the facts, misled the listener, and in all likelyhood probably covered just about every variation of lie known. To support my assertions I offer several examples of his lies:

Steve and Ross have stated in no uncertain terms that they first tried to replicate his results using ALL the data provided. Only AFTER that did they test claims of robustness by removing the bristlecone pines and RE-running the code. This has been explained many times, yet Dr. Mann continues to claim that it has not. We know from the CENSORED directories that Mann performed this robustness test as well, so he has no excuse for his statements.

We know that the corrupted data was provided by Mann and/or his assistants, and later lies that this corrupt data was prepared specifically for Steve an Ross at their request is just an attempt at a cover-up. He also implies that this corrupt data was used by Steve and Ross in their published works, which is just plain false.

Those are just a few; there are a lot more in just that one interview. I don’t know why anyone would believe anything this guy says. I don’t.

I can think of few things I’d less like to be called, or, honeslty, less like to call others. I really honestly hope I’m not a liar. That the word is so often used here is a measure of the bad feeling here no doubt, but, imo, anyone calling somone else a liar puts themselves outside the norms of debate (and I’d apply that to myself if I ever have or will do it). But, I suppose it’s becuase I’m British, and I follow politics and our parliament and it’s rules.

But, think about parliamentary language. Phrases like ‘economical with the truth’ get the message across without the bad feeling (or the grave alegation)- we don’t fight in our parliament and that’s becuase insults have to be cleaver, careful, calm, and well done. That’s the subtle, cautious way to go, not the ‘brick through the window’ approach above.

I called it like I saw it. I did use frank, simple language and backed up what I said with concrete examples. I was not vulgar or profane.

I don’t use the ‘l-word’ often, as it’s usually hurled as an insult by people with less than honest intentions trying to shout down their opponents. However, Mann has clearly crossed the line with his continued use of false accusations and I felt the use of the word ‘liar’ was clearly warranted.

I do, however, apologize to Steve and the blog readers here for stiring up the hornet’s nest, as it were. That was not my intention. I was venting a bit I guess. I could have held my fire, pubically, while still holding to my convictions privately.

I do think this is so Amercian and really so funny in the long run. Everybody standing around telling everyone else that they are wrong. Calling people liars because they challenge others over things which are “known” but not provable.

Let’s just have a look at that statement “known” but not provable.

I have seen scientists verbally crossing swords about “this” and “that” being wrong because “this” satellite data and “that” satellite data was wrong. I have read over the years about scientists saying “It can’t be happening because if it was we would be seeing ‘this’ or ‘that'”.

Then a Nasa scientist and a Danish scientist went to Greenland and actually put GPS sensors on the ground. They used ice penetrating radar and mapped the Glaciers and actually did something other than bandy “statistics”, guess at Ice cores or look at Sattelite readouts.

They found a very strange thing. Satellites can’t measure the elevation drop of Glaciers, GPS recievers can. They found that the Glaciers were actually moving at just over 2 times the “accepted rate of flow”. Odd they thought. Then they looked at the ice penetrating radar images and found that the huge lakes of meltwater that had suddenly disappeared didn’t re-freeze or evaporate (as thought by the staellite watchers), actually they bored down through the ice and then lubricated the Glacier flow.

Again these scientist came back in 2006 and found that the Glacier flow had increased again. It is now “nearly” 3 times the “accepted rate of flow”. They actaully got out there and “Had a look” to prove what was happening.

Then NASA has a look at the Gravity readings for both the Arctic and the Antarctic and found that hundreds of Cubic Miles of Ice was disappearing Every Single Year from both poles.

So the rest of the scientific community stopped saying “Hey it can’t be happening because we would see x” and actually got out of their seats and went to look. After all Satellites can’t see under the sea or sea ice can they?

The last year has been very interesting reading from the scientific community. Lots of “hey x is happening, we didn’t expect THAT”. Finally leading up to “We know that global warming is actually happening, we just can’t agree on why”

Add to the fact that Siberian peat bogs are melting and releasing methane which is much more of a warming agent that CO2. Do we know that because the “Globally massaged stats show it”, because the “Global figures on Methane are up by a significant amount”, because we see a “massive shift in Global temperatures”? Nope we know because dedicated scientists actaully went there and measured the local Methane content.

What did they find? Global Statistics? Nope, they found that the local Methane levels were 26% higher than anywhere else in the recorded world. Just exactly what you would expect from a massive local deposit of Methane which was melting.

So we “know” it’s happening. Do we know why? Probably not. So what do we know?

1. CO2 has a warming effect to one extent or another
2. Global greenery is being destroyed which reduces CO2
3. The sea is slowly being poisoned and it can no longer process the same amount of CO2 per year. It processes up to 50% of the CO2 in the world!
4. We, Humans, produce more and more CO2 every year
5. The planet has finally run out of capacity to process the CO2 that we produce. We know this because global amounts are actaully rising now which means we have overriden the capability of the planet to cope with what we produce
6. The temperature is rising
7. The coldest places in the world are melting
8. Every single time the scientists have guessed about heating effects in the last 30 years they have been long by a factor of about 10

So we can talk. We can produce “lies, damned lies and statistics”, but the bottom line is this.

It’s getting hot in this planet and we’re not helping.

So barring some serious sunspot activity or some massive volcanic activity, it’s going to get wet. Sooner rather than later.

What do we do about it? Argue about what has caused it and what we should do.

Now that sounds adult doesn’t it?

This planet is changing. We CAN do something about it. What are we doing? Generating more hot air to add to the general atmosphere!

Even if we don’t do anything to try and stop it, we should be doing something to protect our populations. But then that would cost money wouldn’t it?

And that is what this all comes down to in the long run. We now it’s coming, we know how bad it is likely to be but it’s simply way too expensive to DO anything about it. Talk is, after all, Cheap.

You may now disect my statements and my British accent and my slighting of your political processes.

What you may not do is escape the consequences of what is going to happen.

I put up the transcript because I felt outraged by the “Today” interview and the fact that our once proud BBC ignored my (and doubtless many other) emails that protested. If Michael man does turn up on Thursday I desperately hope that some congressmen will have done their homework and have a good grasp on the email trail published by Steve that will test the veracity of this infamous interview.

I disagree with a few of your listed facts, but thats not why I am posting. I think another thread needs to be started to address the bottom line, Money, probably yours, mine and ours. How it will be spent, who decides, enforcement issues etc.

I will say I would rather be too warm than too cold, been both, being really cold is really miserable, I rather enjoy being too hot though. Whats that they say about Englishmen and the noonday sun?

Pure logic independent of science suggests that adaptation will address global warming regardless of the issue of what is causing it. Europe has demonstrated that mere exhortation to reducing carbon emissions will not ensure it happens. To do that we need a command economy with personal carbon allowances and “information campaigns” to tell us all that flying and SUV’s are sins. This will mean nothing to you in America but we in the UK already have to get our local commissars go check that our windows and hot water tanks are climate friendly and next year we have to pay £200, at least, for a Euro report to tell any one who wants to buy our house how energy efficient it is.

Would you be so kind as to give us a link to the greenland studies you’re talking about? And the NASA gravity studies? I haven’t seen either of them.

The sea is slowly being poisoned and it can no longer process the same amount of CO2 per year.

This I have looked at and I know you’re wrong here. The oceans process more CO2 each year. What changes is that more CO2 is being emitted each year and the amount remaining in the atmosphere will increase more each year even if the same % is removed by the oceans. I’ve got a spreadsheet somewhere on my computer with the actual figures and what you see is that the % absorbed by the oceans bounces around but is fairly steady.

One interesting fact is that up to now more CO2 is brought up from the depths than is sent down because the upper waters are depleted by plant photosynthesis. At some point this is likely to reverse and CO2 will accumulate in the lower waters.

I don’t recall the numbers but as far back as 10 years ago I remember being given “average” numbers for glacial retreats, many were based on field observations, some were bqased on proxy data like morraine age dating. So, yes there is an “accepted” rate of flow for glaciers, just don’t know what it is. Hope that helps.

while there may well be an “accepted rate of flow” for glaciers (presumably partially dependent on slope and substrate), it seems reasonable that when one changes the method of measuring, ie from rods to satellites to sonar, one would have to reliably calibrate different means of measuring before one says “twice the accepted rate of flow.”

kind of like comparing proxies to thermometers.

#89 peter, could you please define “strongly” in your post? i haven’t seen anyone say there is no warming. quick artihmetic:

Or more moisture, or more sunlight, which have both been shown to be increasing in the 20th century. Your problem is that you automatically throw out all other possibilities because you WANT warming to be man-made.

Mark, the antarctic continent is permanently below freezing, meaning the ice balance *in the continent* is primarily responsive to precipitation and ice flow rates rather than directly to temps. The (preliminary) antarctica ice measurements are interesting and relevant to projections of sea level changes, but not all that relevant to whether warming is happening.

One problem with ice mass balance analyses is that the balances respond to multiple variables, and one needs to isolate the dominant variable(s) before making conclusions on causes.

But first, your statement is a nonseqiutor – that fact that it is permanently below freezing is not, in itself, any evidence of anything at all – not whether it is warming, or cooling or snowing more or less. Just that whatever it is doing, it is still below freezing. And will be for a long time, the place is smack on the pole and largely high altitude, it is VERY FRICKING COLD, and I don’t think its much of a surprise that it has some unexpected feedbacks and responses to climate forcings, and I expect some surprises as we learn more about why it is behaving as it is. So far, none of the surprises we’ve seen is a red flag either for or against AGW.

And remember that there is good reason to expect the southern hemisphere to lag – all that exposed southern ocean to buffer changes. We are clearly observing signiificant warming on the antarctic peninsula, though.

The “increase” in antarctic sea ice is reported as 0.7 +- 1.5 % per decade, over a bit less than three decades. In other words, flat.

(BTW, it has been getting clearly warmer at the antarctic peninsula, over the last three decades or so.)

In the arctic, the decrease in sea ice is reported as -3.4 +- 0.8% per decade. A clear decrease.

These numbers are from the link you provided.
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From the images in the link you gave, it looks like there might be some interesting changes in distribution of sea ice in the antarctic, with anomalous accumulations in some areas, and a ring of anomalously low ice circling the entire continent. I don’t know anythgn about normal variation in year to year distribution of ice, though, so I have no basis to judge whether that is anything potentialy significant.

mark, there is apparently surface coolong in some parts on the surface of antarctica, and steady or some warming in other places.

Cut the crap, Lee. You know as well as I know that the only portion of the Antarctic that is “warming” is on the border of the warm waters of the southern Pacific. Nearly the entire landmass has been steadily cooling since the mid 40s/50s.

You welknow that the surface record inland is sparse (at best) prior to satellite monitoring, and the recent records show clear widespread tropospheric warming. As I said, something unexpected is happening at the surface, and I’m not ignoring that – I’m saying we don’t understand it; how much more clear can I be that it doesnt match expectations and is not understood? – but neither am I ignoring the tropospheric warming record, nor the evidence that of warming just below the continent.

David, I just walked through all 12 months of trend lines. For EVERY MONTH, the errors are larger than the magnitude of the trend, and in most months the trend is very small – fractions of a percent. There is not a single month listed in which the antarctic sea ice trend is distinguishable from zero.

In the arctic, every month has a negative trend distinguishable from zero, with teh trend ranging between about -3 to -8%.

It looks like sea ice is flat, or at most a very small and currently indistinguishable-from-zero increase, in the antarctic, and clearly decreasing in the arctic.

Total
To obtain predictions of global average sea level rise for 1990-2100 for the IS92a scenario with sulphate aerosols, we calculate the sum of the contributions from thermal expansion, glaciers and ice sheets for each AOGCM, and add the 0 to 0.5 mm/yr from the continuing evolution of the ice sheets in response to past climate change (Section 11.2.3.1) and smaller terms from thawing of permafrost (Section 11.2.5) and the effect of sedimentation (Section 11.2.6). The range of our results is 0.11 to 0.77 m (Table 11.14, Figure 11.11), which should be compared with the range of 0.20 to 0.86 m given by Warrick et al. (1996) (SAR Section 7.5.2.4, Figure 7.7) for the same scenario. The AOGCMs have a range of effective climate sensitivities from 1.4 to 4.2°C (Table 9.1), similar to the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C used by Warrick et al. The AOGCM thermal expansion values are generally larger than those of Warrick et al. (SAR Section 7.5.2.4, Figure 7.8), but the other terms are mostly smaller (i.e., more negative in the case of Antarctica).

And on page 431:

For the complete range of AOGCMs and SRES scenarios and including uncertainties in land-ice changes, permafrost changes and sediment deposition, global average sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m over 1990 to 2100, with a central value of 0.48 m (Figure 11.12). The central value gives an average rate of 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate over the 20th century.
The corresponding range reported by Warrick et al. (1996) (representing scenario uncertainty by using all the IS92 scenarios with time-dependent sulphate aerosol) was 0.13 to 0.94 m, obtained using a simple model with climate sensitivities of 1.5 to 4.5°C. Their upper bound is larger than ours. Ice sheet mass balance sensitivities derived from AOGCMs (see Section 11.5.1.1) are smaller (less positive or more negative) than those used by Warrick et al., while the method we have employed for calculating glacier mass loss (Sections 11.2.2 and 11.5.1.1) gives a smaller sea level contribution for similar scenarios than the heuristic model of Wigley and Raper (1995) employed by Warrick et al.

Re: 113. GCM outputs are based on unvalidated mathematical constructs and do not equate to data: garbage in = garbage out. Their baby brothers, the weather forecasting models, don’t have an even chance of predicting the weather one week into the future and you have the temerity to throw century-long GCM prognostications out as data? Amazing stuff.

You welknow that the surface record inland is sparse (at best) prior to satellite monitoring

True Lee, that data is sparse, but when someone uses a small number of proxies to generate a “surface record” reconstruction a la Mann and Jones 2003 (see the proxy locations shown here), they can come to some pretty strong conclusions without being told to “cut the crap” from the scientific community.

global average sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m over 1990 to 2100, with a central value of 0.48 m (Figure 11.12). The central value gives an average rate of 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate over the 20th century.

LOL. If a paper comes out with these kind of ranges in any other scientific discipline, it would never be published. The “central value” means nothing.

Re #117, humm, ballpark guess, March to November? 6C soil temperature I think? Can’t find any data though. With more certainty, take off two weeks off each end for 100 years ago – link (one of several): “The growing season has lengthened by about a month in central England since 1900, with the onset of spring occurring around two to three weeks earlier than just 30 years ago.” ?

Yes, quite a bit of warming has been going on. Apparently it started a long time ago. Anyone know how long ago the last time the Thames froze enough to drive a horse and cart over it?

I suppose if Mann can teleport temperature effects to North American Bristlecones, he could probably teleport some CO2 back in time several hundred years. This climate stuff is really tricky.

From UK historical records:

1407/08 (Winter) The severe winter affected most of Europe, and is regarded by climatologists as one of the most severe on record. The FROST lasted for 15 weeks and people were able to walk across the frozen Thames. According to Ian Currie (a noted authority on historical weather events), “one of the most SNOWY & was of outstanding duration”. [ In Europe, ICE in the Baltic had allowed traffic between the Scandinavian nations, and wolves had passed over the ice from Norway to Denmark.]

1410 In this year, the tidal River Thames FROZE over for 14 weeks. (I think, given the length mentioned, that we have to assign this to winter 1409/10)

1430’s Majority of winters, [ perhaps 7 or 8 ] contained several weeks of widespread SEVERE WEATHER (NB: ‘weeks’, not the paltry ‘days’ we get end 20th / early 21st centuries.) According to Lamb, an experience not repeated / matched until the 1690’s, in the depth of the Little Ice Age (and certainly not in modern times).

1434/35 (may be 1433/34) (Winter) A very severe winter: the Thames FROZE solid (from December to February) and was closed to shipping from Gravesend to below London Bridge, and wine had to be transported overland (or over the ICE-covered Thames) from Gravesend to London. [ Some sources have this as 1433/34 ]

global average sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m over 1990 to 2100, with a central value of 0.48 m (Figure 11.12)

From the 2001 TAR, SEc 11.3.2.1: “On the basis of the published literature, we therefore cannot rule out an average rate of sea level rise of as little as 1.0 mm/yr during the 20th century. For the upper bound, we adopt a limit of 2.0 mm/yr, which includes all recent global estimates with some allowance for systematic uncertainty.”
So 1-2mm/yr is their average rate, which comes out to be 0.1-0.2 m over the 20th century. A substantial portion of the projected 0.09-0.88 m rise from 1990-2100 actually falls below estimated the 20th century rate.

The central value gives an average rate of 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate over the 20th century.

As stated in Chap 11 of the 2001 TAR, Sec 11.3.2.1, “As with other ranges (see Box 11.1), we do not imply that the central value is the best estimate.”

Also from the 2001 TAR: “A common perception is that the rate of sea level rise should have accelerated during the latter half of the 20th century. The tide gauge data for the 20th century show no significant acceleration (e.g., Douglas, 1992).”

24 hours to go, and no sign of a witness list. I kinda suspect there’s a lot of fun and games going on behind the scenes, and I’d really like to be a fly on some walls …
Whatever your involvement, Steve, good luck, and give ’em hell.

re #121, obviously I risk paying a penalty for my honesty. Otoh, I don’t know who you are or what you do or indeed where, in the UK?, you are – I think I might have been better off being anonymous. Dishonesty about who you are clearly helps here.

Re #119, god your a slippery character jae. I guess you hoped no one would notice that came from back in 2000 (and that fewer would know that was before the boiling hot european summer of 2003 and, certainly so far, the near equally hot 2006). Just check out what 2003 did to Alpine glaciers…

Oh Peter, he’s slipperier than that — the page was put up in 2000, the study is actually from 1997. Things have changed a lot in 10 years and I’m sure that there will be a spate of papers out later this year or early next year indicating that arctic glaciers are melting much faster than expected, which seems to be what the latest evidence is pointing to. People reading this might me interested in what some of the latest thinking is on this issue.

Re109
There is evidence that the extent of Antarctic sea ice in 1914-5 was the same as it is today . The book “South” by Ernest Shackleton gives a detailed account of it’s extent in the Weddell Sea at the time
Of couse such evidence will be dismissed by AGW enthusiasts as anecdotal but it no more anecdotal than the temperatures taken at the time and a lot less so than the sea level rise derived by that rude Australian.

#115- peter, i am just trying to get you to define terms, for the purpose of clarity. the growing season in some areas IS 365 days. in other areas it is shorter. but let’s say a growing season is 1/4 of a year.

#129 & #131. The contrast in information content between the two links is quite striking. Notice the emphasis on the models in the RealClimate link with barely any mention of data.

I can’t find the citation but seem to remember that the Artic explorer Nansen deliberately froze his ship in the polar ice in the 1890s but you wouldn’t be able to get a ship that far north today. True or is this my imagination?

#123 1-2mm/yr = 0.2 m/century = 8 in/century. We have an average daily tide of 9.5 ft in Boston. Who’d even notice around here?

Re #128. There’s a report in Science News (7/22/2006) about sandy dunes in north-central Nebraska. A geologist, David Loope, at the University of Nebraska says that these dunes have been frozen in place for 800-1000 years by vegetation. They could not have been formed by modern wind patterns, which run from WNW to ESE. Loope and colleagues report in July 21 Science that to build the Dunes 1000 years ago at start of the MWP, much drier spring winds must have blown in from the SW.

Re #129: The Idso stuff is cheery-picked, intentionally misinterpreted and still out of date, jae. But of course you knew that.

Re #133: Yes, it is *astounding* that an article entitled “Ice Sheets and Sea Level Rise: Model Failure is the Key Issue” would focus on the models. But of course the entire issue is that the models are having a hard time with the observed rapid melting (as they do with abrupt change generally). For up-to-date info on that rapid melting and the cryosphere in general, go to the NSIDC site. As has been mentioned here several times recently, Arctic sea ice is on a continuing downward trend, a new record low for June having just been set. And just as a bit of general advice, ‘ware the Idsos of jae. 🙂

Regarding Nansen, I think if you look around the NSIDC site you’ll see that there’s quite a bit of variability in Arctic sea ice from year to year, which is to say that a single anecdote of that sort doesn’t mean much even if accurate.

Regarding sea level rise and a host of other clinate parameters, if we could assume that they will not exceed current levels or rates of change of course there would be a lot less to worry about.

Back to the subject of Arctic sea ice, this may very well be a simple-minded observation and question, but I stumbled across this plot on the uiuc.com site (thanks Steve Bloom for pointing out the site earlier).

Anyone know how these were measured prior to satellites and how complete the coverage was? I’m thinking in particular that the Soviet land and sea areas may have been tough to access in the 30’s and 40’s. Also, have the models been used to explain why the sea ice has decreased steadily since 1950, but NH temperatures decreased from the 40s to 70s and didn’t start to increase again until the late 70s or early 80s?

Re #129: The Idso stuff is cheery-picked, intentionally misinterpreted and still out of date, jae. But of course you knew that.

Can you prove this, Bloom, or are you just bloviating again. Can you provide alternate FACTS? The problem is that the data and facts just don’t support
your and your employer’s (that would be the Sierra Club) agenda.

Also, have the models been used to explain why the sea ice has decreased steadily since 1950, but NH temperatures decreased from the 40s to 70s and didn’t start to increase again until the late 70s or early 80s?

Maybe it’s the same explanation given for why there was global glacier retreat long before there should have been based on when the hockey stick blade starts, something the IPCC could not reconcile in 2001.

Or maybe the explanation is in Steve’s post? “The entire issue is that the models are having a hard time with the observed rapid melting.” How can the models explain anything when they are bent out of whack with having to model “abrupt change” like you are supposed to see on that chart?

And what you see as “decreased steadily since 1950,” others refer to as things like “rate of decline has advanced dramatically in recent decades.”

But to seriously try and provide a possible explanation…maybe there’s a lag phase (IPCC 2001 suggests a 10-70 yr glacier response lag to temperature change) and the ice was responding to pre-1940 temps when the melt started in 1950. And while the NH was cooling in those decades you referred to, temps were still above some threshold temperature by which we observe net melting, so we haven’t seen a recovery.

My point is that coastal infrastructure is based on clearances above sea level, and if sea level increases that means that there is at least a reduction in safety margins.

Another example – ask the guy who has watched a storm-surge flood run up the river and out of the banks to his door threshold, if 8 inches would have mattered.

In california, where teh entire agricultural delta is behind a precarious set of levees that fail anyway on a pretty regular basis, 8″ would put a major additional stress and almost certainly lead to failures and potential loss of parts of some of the most valuable farm land on the planet.

Also, as I pointed out, the TAR gives a range of rise ovr the next century of about 0.1 (the 0.2 I posted above was a typo) to about 0.9 m, and most of that range is more than 8″

Well Paul First off he thinks that the Charles is below sea level. And more importantly that any pumps installed currently can’t handle an additional 8 inches of head (0.3 psi). I assume he means the pumps at the lock entrance to the harbor, while I’m pretty sure it pumps the other way (i.e the Charles is higher than the Harbor) any pump system could easily handle the extra 8 inches, nevermind that the pump is sure to be replaced/upgraded in the next 100 years. Either way the pumps don’t have to pump up the level, they let gravity handle that (open the lock to the high side level, let water flow in) pumps don’t do much then. The Pumps pump down the level. Again still easy, you just open the lock to the low side after sealing the high side.

I.e. the pumps have very little load on them at any time.

But if it becomes a big issue, they can just allow extra flow from the upstream dams. After all the source of the Charles is 350 feet above sea level, should be able to allow for the extra head.

Then there is the seawall system, that apparently they build 1/4 inch above high tide.

The water level at the Charles River basin is about 0.8 m above mean sea level – meaning it is below frequent high tide levels – thus the existence of the pumps. The Charles River Dam pumps primarily provide flood protection during high flows at high tide – ie, they pump river water out, uphill. Given the purpose of eh pumps, to handle flood flows, your suggestin of increasing flow to reduce the head is a bit self-defeating. Can they handle a greater head? Sure, with greater energy expense. Which was my (I thought obvious) point. There is a cost associated.

You’ll definitely have to give a citation. I’ve been trough the locks at the Charles more than once. Don’t see any reason to have to pump the water level down during flood situations, besides many dams there are also a variety of canals to handle overflow. And since it is not open to the harbor, sea level isn’t rally an issue. As I recall it, the lock extends many feet above high tide.

Rivers overflow from high rainfall (as the Charles did recently). High tide/sea level isn’t an issue, as the harbor protects it for one, and the dam/lock for two.

I lived near it for many years. Flood isn’t an issue for the Charles, at any point along it’s 26 mile length. Under high rain the small islands that are about 1 foot above river level get waterlogged, but never covered.

Those are less than a 1/2 mile from Boston Harbor. Storm surge effects them not at all.

ET, I’ll see if I can find a link. My father was a water engineer – he was the planning and supervising engineer for the last largish dam project the state of calinfornia built in the 60s. What I’ve said is based on his talking me through the charles river project when he visited at a time I was living in the boston area.

Sea level does matter – if sea level is above river level, then the river cant flow across the dam and out to sea- the sea will flow in. If the engineer simply close the dam, then the river waters back up in the basin,a nd if there are high flows, it backs up pretty rapidly – and that is why they have the pumps, to pump that water out.

BTW, the charles doesnt flood largely becasue the Army Corp made an interesting decisin during flood planning. Rather than channelize and dam the upper river a is the Corp’s wont, they (an the state under their advise) purchased large tracts of flood plains and left them in marsh and low riparian habitat. They did this because a major series fo storms came throgh during their study period, and they watched chanelized rivers in the regionflood, and also atched the flood plains of the charles absorb the high water and meter it back downstream, so they got sustained high flows but not ctastrophic flooding as woudl have happened if all tht water came down at once.

Unfortunately, they didnt seem to later be able to transfer this lesson elsewhere.
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I haven’t found a definitive link describing teh pump operation, but here is a link to the Universities Space Research Association, a Picture of the Day with a pic of the charles river basin and a description of the purpose of the pumps.USRA

“I can’t find the citation but seem to remember that the Artic explorer Nansen deliberately froze his ship in the polar ice in the 1890s but you wouldn’t be able to get a ship that far north today. True or is this my imagination?”
It’s true, it is on the Warwick Hughes website.
As usual this sort evidence is called annecdotal but all Nansens explorations indicate that the Arctic ice pack was less extensive in the 1890s than it has been in recent years.

#132. Dave, OK, since you talk percentages, one way I see to measure the changes we see in that way is to start from absolute zero, add a degree or two background heat, add ~250C for the effect of the sun, ~33C for ghg’s and ~2-3C on top of that for AGW. So, on that basis AGW is, what,

That’s about it. Unless it’s proven by [add span of years here – usually in excess of 100] years evidnece any warming trend is dismissed, but if there’s one article on a chosen website that say’s it might not be so, well, that’s then ‘true’.

Re #153 et al, Peter Hearnden
Peter, I’d guess that you were trying to use the “less than” sign. The blog interprets this as the beginning of a tag, and gets unhappy if it isn’t folowed by some HTML.
You can make it do a “less than” with the following four characters: & l t ; (remove all the spaces).

Re #154 – Peter, perhaps you’d like to consider the words of a rather well-known professor (from the year 2000):

“Conventional approaches to understanding the factors underlying the recent warming have involved complex numerical models of the combined ocean-atmosphere system. Although highly suggestive of a detectable human influence on climate, these studies have been limited by intrinsic uncertainties in comparing model-predicted climate change patterns with the instrumental climate record. At roughly one century, the latter is too short to allow unambiguous attribution of changes to human influences”.

He does not go on to specify how many additional years of instrumental record are needed, but he would seem to be on record that we are not there yet.

Actually I’m in fair agreement with him. I think ‘highly suggestive of a detectable human influence on climate’ means just that, and that ‘At roughly one century, the latter is too short to allow unambiguous attribution of changes to human influences’- is also ‘right’, if one knows what unambiguous means, though I’d like to know how you warm a planet by .6C+ using known forcing and excluding any resulting from our actions. As I understand it only with anthro forcing do the figures add up.

But, for most here I suspect 3C warming by 2100 wouldn’t be unambiguous enough…